“An interesting new book from Andrew Bricker, Assistant Professor of English, Ghent University, and Senior Fellow at the Andrew W Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography at the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia. Libel and Lampoon: Satire in the Courts, 1670-1792 (Oxford University Press, 2022). Libel and Lampoon shows how English satire and the law mutually shaped each other during the long eighteenth century. Following the lapse of prepublication licensing in 1695, the authorities quickly turned to the courts and newly repurposed libel laws in an attempt to regulate the press. In response, satirists and their booksellers devised a range of evasions. Writers increasingly capitalized on forms of verbal ambiguity, including irony, allegory, circumlocution, and indirection, while shifty printers and booksellers turned to a host of publication ruses that complicated the mechanics of both detection and prosecution …” (more)
[Christine Corcos, Law and Humanities Blog, 9 February]
First posted 2022-02-10 13:00:22
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